FROM THE FRONT
In case you’ve not already looked, I must warn you that there are only a very few bikes for sale in this issue. It’s probably the lowest number we’ve ever had, which must contain a secret message – if only I knew what it was! But there’s another reason for the small number. There could have been a lot more than you’ll see, because we received a lot more – maybe three times as many, all told. So what happened? Things change in the online world of classics – as they change everywhere, of course – and one of those changes has seen an influx of private ads from the USA. These land in the RC mailbox along with much else, and they’re always ads for interesting bikes – high ticket and often unusual. Several of them are for bikes which are rather more common in the US than they are in the UK, as you might expect. So far so good. So what’s the problem?
Like many others, we are very aware of online scamming, a mysterious process which apparently involves separating enthusiasts from their money. This can happen in more than one way, but in this case it’s most likely that an enthusiast will gaze in awe at a fine example of an excellent motorcycle and for some reason will pay out a deposit before actually seeing it in the metal. Scoff not, I have done this myself many times, and every time I’ve done so the bike has been at least as good in the metal as the ad suggested, and it has often been better. I’ve bought bikes unseen from the US, also, never with any problems. However…
Some issues ago, I found myself gazing at an ad for a bike I’ve long coveted, and was feeling flush, and there was space in The Shed, and I’d read the book about the bike and … hang on, I thought, the pic looks familiar. So off I went online and searched for it. Sure enough, there was the same photo of the same bike in the same location, except that the location was nowhere near the location in the advert. I dropped a mail to the vendor asking whether he could clarify this, please? No reply. We didn’t run the ad.
This takes quite a lot of time, and I always wonder whether I’m being unfair, so have allowed a certain flexibility. I search for duplicates of the image and if I can’t find one, we run the ad. This month, however, we received eight ads for really really nice bikes, all in Oregon, USA. Which of course they may be. They may, for example, be sent from different email addresses and with different terrestrial addresses because the vendor is a trader and is trying to disguise that fact, for whatever reason.
They may also be a serious attempt at a scam, whereby the ‘vendor’ doesn’t have the bike, merely photos of it that they’re stolen online, and is hoping that someone will pay a decent sum as a deposit, say, on a bike they’ve not actually seen – and which may not in fact exist except in the shed of his actual owner. Who probably doesn’t live in Oregon, USA.
On the other other hand, my concern is also that I may be depriving you, gentle reader, of the opportunity to acquire that dream machine. It is a conundrum…
Ride safely